Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/252

 the development of miasma than India, the laws of the realm prohibit the growth of rice contiguous to towns.

14. TANKS, POOLS AND DRAINS.—But marshes and rice fields are but two of the many sources of disease to be seen on every hand in India. Every native of rank has a nursery for fever in the immediate vicinity of his house called a tank, and every poor man a pool, from which he dug the mud to build his house,which seem as if made on purpose to supply them with malaria, as well as with muddy water. I do not mean to attribute any blame to tanks and ponds, if kept properly clean, they would then be both useful and ornamental, and the sod excavated in forming them would serve to raise the adjoining land and render it dry; but from the weeds and jungle that in most cases are allowed to infest them, they exert the most prejudicial effects on the health of the inhabitants. If the ditches of Fort William were allowed to remain filled with stagnant water, and become a field for the study of reeds and rushes, its present healthy character would soon leave it, and were the numerous tanks throughout Calcutta left to nature, the consequences on the public health would be calamitous.

Things are bad enough as they are. Calcutta is probably the worst drained city in the British dominions; its present drains are nothing better